


sweet talk

by ruruka



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, au where light is deaf and also a mortician and L is blind but mostly he’s just...well he’s L.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 11:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20007391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: light doesn’t realize he’s lonely until he has no longer a reason to be.





	1. Chapter 1

Light lives his life four-dimensionally. 

In the first layer, the core of himself, he’s everything the world told him to be from the moment he stepped into it. Around a curve, he’s paradise on paper, imperial, endless, the most ineffable businessman, prince, delight, that anyone should ever know. He’s unique in his excellence, but Light lives as anyone else does, a hard worker and a handsome looker, enchanted by the vibrations of sound wrapping him from the soles up, the feeling of being so unapologetically alive that rushes intravenously through him in every beat- that’s what he feels when his sister’s going on about her favorite drama episodes in the living room, or when his mother hums beside him as piano keys kiss his fingerpads, his father’s steps through the front door close to midnight and ones out before dawn, and now, as he’s tapping his leather oxford to the sensation of the little radio that croons in his afternoons here. Sometimes he wonders if it’s too loud, but he supposes Misa would take care of that in the times she skirts through to describe the current song or gush over his latest work. 

Likewise, she’ll tell him if she hears the front door rattle, so there’s no reason to stress for his turn facing opposite, engrossed by the beige edges of photographs in his hand. They’d come in a manila envelope this morning. That’s what his wife said, through a choke, that he should look like. That’s what he would have wanted.

Behind the front counter, he fills the gap between the shelving overhead, separate compartments for each their rightful things, just as he organizes the sections of his life. Everything in its proper place. In the next moment, the proper place for the photographs he hardly dare leave a fingerprint upon is back inside their envelope, tucking them cautiously inside with the memory of their images at heart. It slides into its designated slot as Light’s turning himself around again, and as Light is turning himself around again, he flinches, the most idle notch, because he shouldn’t have trusted his associate so well, by evidence of the newest client leaning an inch from the counter, surveying in wide strokes of the eyes. 

Regardless of the tight vex pursing his lips, Light knows well enough how to flick the switch on his retail persona, one that comes alive now as he faces forward blaring only the widest welcome. 

It wastes itself.

“It smells enough like formaldehyde in here to assume I’ve made it to the correct place.” Vast eyes predict the center of his face like bullets training. Light keeps his smile, teeth sharp together despite the curve of brows inward. As someone who plays with cadavers for a living, he...shouldn’t be so perturbed by anything as he is this stranger. But those eyes won’t stop pinning him, skin a sallow pale along the incline he stands at, and the bony tendril of a finger that lifts to his lip, the blockade between Light and any further information. Light allows the stranger to go on that way for what could hardly be half a sentence before he’s raised his hands to cut him off. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” his fingers move to say, “I’m deaf.”

Perhaps his most detested way to introduce himself, but in such a busied line of work, he can only read lips so long before clientele will think, huh, this guy sure doesn’t have much at all to say. He’ll explain himself sooner or later, though he does recall the several consultations he’s made it through without a single breath of it uttered. Grieving relatives don’t care as much for the creepy mortician’s lack of communication so much as they do the ache of their chests, he supposes. 

Other times, Misa works as competent enough sock puppet.

This time, he’s alone, with the stranger across from him who looks far more like his usual canvases than a customer able to walk and talk and breathe inside his dark little corner office. As soon as he’s explained, halfway in true language and half in pantomimes a normal civilian can understand (as he’s sure covering both ears before a shrug is the universal symbol for, hey, sorry, I can’t fucking hear you, dude); as soon as he’s explained, the other bent up mess of a man holds his mouth still, silent most probably, until Light is again able to catch his mouth’s melting movements. 

“I can tell you’ve just moved, but I admit I’m at somewhat of a loss.” The stranger’s eyes loll toward the ceiling, exhale ruffling his bottom lip as Light makes out the doubting, “I suppose I can’t even be certain I’m speaking to a person right now…”

Flash quick, whip quick, Light doesn’t know what’s come over him enough to dart a hand out to claim the stranger’s wrist, pausing where he’d begun to turn away from the counter’s muted reflection. They stand starkly there together a moment, just long enough for Light to claim his bearings in this awfully twisted lack of personal space as he takes the other’s hand, noting how clean and filed each fingernail rests, lifting his own to trace the word _deaf_ against the foreign palm.

“Huh,” breathes shortly out from him, judging by how little his nose tips upward, how his browline raises, set again upon staring needles directly through Light’s face. “...Can you read lips?”

Light nods, simmering in the silence a second before his stupidity shakes out, grasping delicately instead the other’s limp hand to lay atop his own, map out the shape of an upward thumb.

“Alright,” says the man across the counter, and Light regrets touching his hands so much once he watches how easy he finds it to stick a thumbnail in his teeth. It drops for him to see, “Then you’ll be a valuable asset to me. I need to make some...mortuary arrangements.”

A knuckle curls beneath Light’s lip. He almost cannot decide what’s of less luck, for he to have to handle a client that cannot see his communications of any sort, or the client himself, who’s stumbled across the only deaf mortician in all of Japan. His molars click together. When he checks his phone screen, something so scandalous in the face of business yet not so now in surreptitious silence, it tells him the day has reached its noontime peak, and Misa hadn’t told him the doorbell sang because she’s still got thirteen minutes left to her lunchbreak, and thus too can’t be of use to him now. He feels the thrum up his tendons as he taps each finger along the counter oak, then, then he’s the genius he’s always been, and in a handful of swipes, taps, clicks, he’s got his solution.

“ _I’m sorry for your loss,”_ his phone speaker relays, reading aloud the line of text he’d typed between them. _“If you’d like to follow me into my consultation office, we can discuss more details in private.”_

Not a motion follows it, the way his phone sits suspended in midair by one lingering palm, watching as the other blinks slow, pattering beats, then mouths to him, “I didn’t expect someone with such soft hands to sound like a robot.”

_“...I’m sorry, I don’t know what a robot sounds like.”_

The stranger, in the little smirk that crawls to his mouth, laughs. 

“That’s cute,” Light could _swear_ he’s read, though wouldn’t place more than a banknote on- still, he’s to keep up as the man goes on. “Regardless,” sighs out from him, prodding a finger to the finest slice of scar tissue on his bottom lip until he thinks enough to lay his hands down flat, “I won’t be needing much of a consultation session. I only want to know what you can offer me once I end my life tomorrow.”

Light blinks.

His thumbs halt just above the screen of his keyboard. 

Silence.

“Oh, my God, really?” 

Fourteen minutes the following, he’s gone from lone to not again in such a swift measure to spin his head. The _CLOSED_ sign flipped upon the glass of the front entrance aids to mend that, placed in a lean toward the wall of the far back room, the shadowed hall where Misa’s equipment bothers him as much as the shape beneath the stark white sheet on the table does. Light nods to her, to which she signs in animated strokes, “What did you say to him? Did you tell him not to do it?”

He awaits her turn around the wipe dust from her table and float it into the stream of lamp light, wiping palms to her corset strings as her attention again finds his response. “I didn’t know what to say, to be honest. I said he shouldn’t do that, but I don’t know anything about his life. I didn’t even get his name. ...I’m just hoping he comes back again, so I can try to fix my mistake of letting him walk out of here.”

“Oh, Light, you’re so sensitive and caring...” begins the way she sighs and clutches two gloved hands to her heart. “I know if I was going to kill myself, one look at your face would make me- Oh, well…I guess if he was blind, then he didn’t get to look at you…”

Light steers his chest against an exhale.

Twenty one hours pass between his first encounter with the stray mutt type of man who’d wandered vaguely into his life, and the intricate workings of his tools through graying skin, with only a triple dozen thoughts of the former along the way. 

The stool beneath him does not tremble. Every last motion falls pristinely where it should, as it should, taken now to leaning over the body before him to weave slowly the sutures to set the mouth from its inside. Light doesn’t care to breathe during this step. Facial skin’s far too delicate. 

A hand cupping his elbow has only so unfortunate a timing choice; the needle pokes hazard into the gumline he sews, blinking harsh streams all the way to twisting himself around.

“Sorry, I don’t want to bother you,” Misa signs, yet the urgency written in her expression defies remorse. “But I think that man is back. The sad one from yesterday?”

Light blinks.

His gloves and mask have stripped off for the soft plastic of the trash can in notable swiftness, carrying his steps out to squint in the brightened sun of the main office entrance. Presence stays hotly behind him the whole way, never knowing his closest subordinate to stray far when she’s able; though despite her, Light traipses forward, out toward the sun and out toward where he can see a cast shadow long before he’s within it. The sad one from yesterday, indeed, that’s him standing there with his angular back and angular nose, features all distinctly as European as Light had thought the day prior. When he approaches, he bows out of habit, clearing his throat to fantasize a greeting up from it. Rather, the lips that move are fat and cherry scented, Misa clasping her hands forward as she carries, “I brought Light out for you, Mr. Ryuzaki. He’s right here, oh, and I can translate anything you two want to say to each other. Won’t that be helpful?”

The desperation for his single nod of the head burns up his skin. Still, he’s taken there, standing in the glaze of late morning sun as it lays upon...Mr. Ryuzaki’s face. He’s waiting for anything to be normal about this guy. 

“Sooo...what brings you back here?” passes from Light’s hands to Misa’s mouth like a gradeschool love letter, and he scratches a cheekbone to the only hope that she can relay his words with as much impact as himself. “Are you feeling better?”

“Hm,” he reads on his mouth rather than her hands, “I have no gauge to judge that upon. However, if you’re wondering what I’m still breathing for-” 

A dip of a finger inside his lip drags frustration to instead watch Misa finish, “I still have questions for you, I can’t die until I’m certain my afterlife will satisfy me. How- Um, sorry...I don’t know the JSL for prosthetic leg.”

As Light perks a brow, he’s far more agog once his visitor leans a step back enough to vault one leg up upon the counter, reeling the pant leg high enough by its cuff to reveal all the inner workings of the metallic limb. Surprise beckons Light into silence.

“Wow…” gawks Misa, unfazed by how nonchalantly a customer has just walked inside and kicked his leg up on the counter, as if it's a normal way to behave in public. Light tenses his teeth whilst she leans further in to inspect the anatomy of it. “That’s so interesting, I love it! I think it could be cuter, though, I should bring in my Hello Kitty stickers tomorrow.”

A palm to her shoulder keeps her nose from shortening its centimeter separation any further, golden clips of hair swaying backward as she does. Misa tilts her head like a lost puppy dog. Then, she nods.

“Light says not to put your dirty sneaker on his counters,” she translates. “And that you’re welcome to ask him any questions you have concerning, um, death and burial processes, but you have to...write a letter first? Did I get that right?”

Up his throat builds a dam atop frustration as he stands before her, repeated in his motions for _make an appointment, appointment, appointment,_ until she slaps a hand to her forehead, eyes tipping backward in a long exhale. “Ohhh. You have to have an appointment. We _are_ pretty busy around here, but I’ll be happy to fit you in any time you like!”

The third, since perched back on two feet, tilts forward just enough for Light to watch his mouth murmur into an amused curve. More than anything, a smile’s his most favored facial cue, though when this man smiles, a dagger sheds the skin of his stomach. 

When Misa mimics it behind her fingers, Light _knows_ something deplorable has been passed in secret between them, and when she looks at him, her gestured, “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” sends his cells crawling.

She sets herself toward the back after spouting something so fast Light only can catch the words _me_ and _book,_ so he uses all his intellect to guess she’s gone to fetch the reception book and schedule the dead man walking for his _appointment._ Right, she’s doing her job, and Light should be doing his, but it’s just that...that he’s anchored here, glancing forward to the other, that faint lip scar, the dark eyes and their shadows and his rat nest of black hair that had all bled into Light’s brain a sleepless past night, the way this stranger lacks every sense of poise yet altogether cannot lose Light’s eye, because when Light watches him, he swears he watches right back.

“I want to tell you,” pulls him out of reverie by the jawline, the way the mouth he’s examined for each millimeter calls out to him, the hand that first lays against a contour of chest as if to signal, _me me me,_ and the way this perfect stranger fumbles forth until he’s holding Light’s palm enough to overturn it, and with one finger trace a single English character.

_L._


	2. Chapter 2

Vibrations quiver him from every night’s rest. 

Though lace white curtains hail their aesthetic appeal, he thinks often that six AM sunlight leering right in his retinas each day can’t possibly be good for setting any further mood. He wonders, too, what type of mood an embalmer is meant to display, but decides it’s far too early for that, and continues coaxing the sock up his ankle. 

The drive to work leaves him yawning against the visor shade, blinking away the blear for another hard mile onward. There’s no reason to be so tired, naught to keep him up too late, only, well, there is, and when Light arrives at his office, the reason is sitting on the front lip to the entry threshold, door locked behind his head, knees curled up to the chest.

Light has his cell phone notes open before he’s even left the car.

 _“L,”_ cajoles the named one’s lids to part open, peering up toward the disturbance of Yagami Light’s scalding tramp forward. _“What are you doing? Didn’t Misa tell you your consultation isn’t until noon?”_

His temper watches L’s expression contort, jaw leaning down to the pedestal of a fist. “I couldn’t sleep,” Light reads, readied to roll his two eyes as if to think the goddamned same until motion stiffens him still. “And, I wanted to show you this.”

Between them, a single measure sundered, hands lift to sign, “Hello. It’s nice to meet you. My name is L. What’s your name?”

Punctuation chases a solid _yoroshiku onegaishimasu._ Light’s almost amazed enough clap. 

Instead, he snorts.

 _“Great. Anything else?”_ asks his phone. L blinks the darkened edges of either eye, lifting an indecorous shrug. “Watari could only handle teaching me so much before deciding I’d become too impertinent, so to speak.”

When Light laughs again, he bites its life shortened once L comments, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

His lids thin a leer, replacing L’s spot on the front asphalt, once he’s dragged himself up, to fit key to lock, creaking the door open for the pair of them- not that he’d invited L inside, but L, if Light can discern anything about a person after knowing them for three days, L follows only the rules he designs. 

_“How are you feeling today?”_

Never in his twenty three years of life has he let anyone know how impolite he’d like to be. Gold washes their shoulders as the lights flick on, taking his steps strictly forward toward the same routine he’s held every morning, regardless of spectators. Even if it irks him just a touch to have his schedule fit around those L-crafted rules, he doesn’t have much to do this morning, so if he’s here a little early, then, _sure_. 

Light would forget he’d asked anything were it not for the hand waving his attention away from the paperwork he sifts through atop the front counter. L stands on its second side, as he so does, peering him hotly through the center. “I still have questions for you. You tend to ignore me when I ask. An abject business tactic, one might say.”

He only wishes the deepset exasperation of his expression could be seen now. Rather, he sighs down the nose as focus taps letters across the screen.

_“You can ask all the questions you like during your appointment. You don’t get to just walk in here and monopolize my time.”_

Across the counter, L’s face does not change, not til his mouth’s thin stripe relays, “You know, Light, I actually did learn more sign language.”

His middle finger proves itself to be just as long and eerie as the rest. Light stands rigid in posture, poised to vent his newest _feelings_ out on his notes before interruption saunters through. 

“-a _liiittle_ late, but that’s okay right? Oh, good morning, Ryuzaki. Back so soon?” 

Misa’s a China doll in cobalt contact lenses, dress form fitting and lacey at the most appropriate edges. She clasps her hands together, Light watches, nails all sharpened black acrylics folded into each other as she bows toward their guest and pops back up again. Another twist, and a kiss blows toward Light, one he does not have to hide his sneer toward once she’s quick as a wink to be distracted.

“Yes, I have many urgent questions,” L responds in slow drags, and in a reach forward finds her arm to grip upon. “Oh, Amane, if you could, I’d like to have this side of the room described to me-”

Inward, they turn to face the opposite way, Light only able to trace the outline of Misa’s tilting head and L’s short nods as silence wraps its garrote about his throat. 

Light clenches a fist hard enough to leave imprints in his palm, then flattens it to slap three sharp hits to the wood of the countertop. 

She’s the first to flinch at it, arms clutched up afront her as she faces him again, and she dares her pretty little lullaby of a laugh before signing, “Sorry, Light, did you need something?”

If he could stare to any higher degree, he’s certain their flesh would melt off.

 _“I have work to do,”_ they wait as he types out. _“You’re free to discuss your questions with Misa if she’s available right now. Otherwise, I’ll have to ask you to come back at another time.”_

“Of course I’m available!” burns his sight in the worst of ways, far more so once she’s grasped L’s hand in her own two, leading him off through the narrow pathway toward the back. “I know all there is to know, I’ve been watching Light work for years. And if you’re worried about your eyebags or big nose or anything, you’re in the right place. Postmortem makeup is my specialty, I can-”

Silence meets the turn of her face away as they curl the corner wall. 

The next time he sees L, he’s slightly less suffocated in annoyance. Slightly. 

Day breaks to dusk and dawn again, as it often likes to, and he’s up at the same thrum of the clock to shove himself into the darkened cape of his work, as he often likes to. Gloves strip to the trashbin after seventy seven or so minutes filleting the fragile edges of silent arteries, and the vaguely damp sensation the latex leaves behind runs away with the sink tap. His palms trade stock in a paper towel as he’s walking out toward the front again, watching his power grow in the window reflection beside his stance at the counter, his home there, all the compartments behind him not of as much interest as the sudden toss of color through the back archway. Misa dances like she’s made of broken bones in her rush out to him, and only once he sees her shout, “I’ll get it!” does he understand. The phone clicks up off its cradle. “Hello, you’ve reached the office of mortuary technician Yagami Light, how may I help you?”

With such an introduction, he doesn’t expect the wide stretch of a grin to coast her mouth. Though, no matter his distaste for it, watching it be covered by a hand to cut him out of the conversation knits twice the sneer. Vision flicks to him, and Misa nods once, the delicate cream of her hands and their pretty manicure dropping the receiver down again. She smiles again, this time for him, signaling that the call’s been of no importance as she moves to vanish again. No amount of aggressive signings of her name lure her back. Light breathes fresh hate.

The hip pocket of his ironed khaki pants vibrates a jarring note, and he very newly prefers the solitude up here.

_(Monday, 3:13 PM) UNKNOWN CALLER: I have some questions for you, Dr Yagami._

A fist clutches itself darkly down. He allows his eyes close only long enough for an exhale, opened again to survey the outside expanse beyond the windows. 

_(Sent Monday, 3:17 PM): I’m not a doctor. You can schedule another consultation appointment with Misa if you have any further questions. Thank you._

And hardly does he get the chance to close his text window before the conversation’s building again.

_(Monday, 3:18 PM) UNKNOWN CALLER: Alright. Write me in for 3:30, I’ll be on my way shortly._

His jaw tautens handsomely. 

_(Sent Monday, 3:19 PM): I’m about to go on break. You’ll have to talk to Misa through the receptionist line. Thank you._

_(Monday, 3:19 PM): Alright. I’ll be at the coffee shop around the corner, then._

Light isn’t certain how loudly he’s growled, though if the tearstained face of the woman across the counter serves as any indication, he’s next to be cuffed. So quickly does the device pocket that he barely knows it exists, message left read, reality pressing him far more as it comes into view. He greets the client with a wave and a smile. She delves right into the story of her great uncle’s recent passing. Easy. 

At three:twenty eight, he’s tapping his fingertips against the counter edge. 

At three:thirty two, Misa seems surprised to see him there, blinking into asking out, “Aren’t you going to have lunch?”

At three:forty seven, there’s a slice of shortcake set at the empty seat across the table, and even if the strawberry is missing, L’s done a convincing enough job smoothing out the frosting on the top. 

“I thought you’d come,” Light sees him say, and he’s not shocked but more so intrigued by the hollow eyes that aim directly for him without a single indicator. Color fans his throat.

_“If you aren’t going to stop pestering me about your questions, I may as well humor you and hear them all.”_

Yes, he does see L mumble, “That’d be something,” but he pulls out the empty seat and places himself in it, anyway.

At the late afternoon hour, the coffee house does not serve so many bustling patrons as it does every morning when Light stops inside for one tall black brew, a regular recognized by face by the myriad of workers behind the drink station. He can only wonder how L has earned his stalking license this fast, yet a different question chooses to lift up between them. _“How did your appointment with Misa go? Was she able to help you like you needed?”_

Balanced on a crouch, L leaves his hands resting on kneecaps, taps one index in rhythm as he moves toward speech. “Yes, she was quite the help. Very descriptive.” L does not smirk in his continuum, but Light can nearly smell it in his voice. “I’ve always liked brown eyes.”

A sharp inhale takes his nose, plastering the mortification he feels deep into each sinus. Hands grip the fabric of his thighs. He’d go on for the screen laying ahead of him were it not for the way L licks his teeth in thought.

“Nevertheless,” comes with exhaustion close to malleable in his palms, “I still have some concerns. Will my wishes be accommodated? You and I will be parting ways soon. It would benefit me to know that you’ll look after my body with utmost care.”

The very rim of Light’s brain tells him this guy’s too much of a rodent to be serious about tying the rope. How many days has it been now? In another life, he’d tap his watch. In this one, he taps his keyboard. _“What sort of wishes do you have?”_

Deftly, fingertips reach to pinch the tag of a teabag, dipping it absently in its cup while L massages thought into action. “It’s nothing much, only that you ensure I’m presented the same way in death as I was in life.” Light almost wants to tell him no worries, he’s got a closed casket face, though leans too focused on making out the rest of what comes. “And, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like my casket to be made out of-”

A squint tightens down, begging, _“Could you repeat that last part?”_

L nods, complies. Light, to any outsider, would look as if he’s elbow deep in a cold case. 

When the cool touch of a phone nudges his knuckles, L wastes no time wrapping his fingers forward, and Light watches him fumble toward the bottom edge of the screen until bringing the speaker close enough to his lips to fog it. It retracts, lids blinking a moment before the phone hands back to Light, where he reads the new note.

_Caramel._

If only to himself, Light signs, “You’re a fucking idiot,” before moving toward typing again.

 _“I don’t work with caskets, you’d have to talk to your funeral director about that.”_ Another grim line pulls at his mouth. _“Regardless, I’ll be happy to tend to you once your time comes, but I won’t encourage you to take your own life. You should seek some kind of help.”_

How thoughtful a look, Light has never seen grace anyone’s features but L’s in this moment as he mouths, “I am.”

And he himself, the internal tempest, watches L fiddle with his tea tag, string winding one cold knuckle, remembering that feeling in the seconds they’d touched, a memory Light thinks he’d trudge through hell to keep a hold on if for nothing but to know L has truly existed. He thinks only of him at midnights where sleep eludes. He thinks he’s never met a client outside the office, and he wants to remember L exists because L sounds so perfectly of a storybook page, Light could be awake those nights and wonder if it ever really happened.

Lunch today is strawberryless shortcake.


	3. Chapter 3

As he drives, he draws a map. 

_Work. (Misa’s apartment above)._

_Coffee shop. Knows his order by heart._

_His apartment, first floor, one bedroom, clean as ten whistles. One hundred sixty thousand yen a month._

In his mind, it’s a perfect linear path, his routine forth and back. Only does it break on those special occasions where he’ll have a Thursday or Friday mostly clear, and he’s showered twice by two PM to be on his way toward the video call vibrating his phone labeled _Mom_.

_Ten more minutes across the city- parent’s house._

“Hey, stupid,” his sister grins as she opens the front door to its rung bell. “Mom and Dad are in the kitchen. Wanna watch the end of this show with me?”

Having stepped inside, Light rides the tremor of his jacket zipper downward, and he needn’t glance more than a moment at the television, its block letter subtitles already set on by default, to know he’s no interest. Her homemade hand sign for Ryūga Hideki had been enough of a turnoff. 

“Oh, Light, you’re here,” relays its warmth as he watches the lamplight kiss off his mother’s rings. Sight flicks up to her smile until he’s blinded by the hug she wraps him in, drawing back with palms on his arms and joy in her eyes. “Are you hungry? It’s early for dinner, but I made some castella this morning. It’s probably been a while since you’ve had that.”

He can tell when she laughs based on how her eyes’ corners pinch in such rapture, the same way he knows something he’s said has been a real hit when Sayu leans forward a palm to cup her teeth. Over Sachiko’s head, a straight stare lands to claim his father as he nods to him, freeing hands of stray water over the kitchen sink basin before they lift to tell him, “Hello, Light. Did you make it here alright?”

Allowing his mother draw away again, Light takes full attention on Souichirou, wishing closely to scoff at the question that always finds him. “Yeah, the drive was fine, Dad,” he says, hands pausing in their ten and two position as he considers his own question. “How has work been? I heard about those two bank robberies on the news last weekend.”

Readjusting his lenses, Souichirou nods darkly, going on in vague detail about the case the NPA has taken on. 

By the time the question reciprocates, the living room seats have filled themselves, daytime drama traded for the newcast across the screen, only mildly to Sayu’s chagrin as she lounges on the couch beside him; his father claims the armchair to his right side, and only once so far has he checked the time, a new record, he thinks, as Sachiko smooths her skirt to sit in between her children. “What about you, honey, how’s work been?”

A hungry eye watches the slice of castella she’s set to the coffee table. Light steels himself, lifting brightness in a glance up toward his mother. “Good,” he signs. “Things are going alright. ...I got a new client recently. He's fine, I just can't seem to get rid of him.”

“Wait, I thought you just made dead people look good, not actually killed them yourself,” Sayu says, Sachiko in between them to defuse the disenchanted look on his face.

“I mean,” he mends, “I can’t get him to leave me alone. It’s just troublesome, especially since he’s blind. I can hardly communicate with him.”

A mug clinks to the table with Souichirou’s lean, offering vaguely, “You won’t speak to him?”

Some sort of sickly heat invades his flesh to see his father speak of him that way, as if he’s petulant in his comforts, the same way he’d been told to _oh, come on, just give it a try_ after nine years of speech therapy still had not instilled confidence enough to trust his own voice, and he’d told his parents he’d wanted no more to do with it. So, yes, he’s been trained well enough verbalize, yet cannot count the last time he’d properly done so. An ache tingles on the inner rings of his throat at the idea.

“No way, it’d be weird to hear Light talk after so many years,” Sayu exclaims, the dainty lemon drop. “You can, like, write stuff down for the guy. Maybe you can learn Braille.”

“Of course, Light can communicate however he likes,” his father soothes, perhaps a leap to fix his own blunder. “...It’s interesting that you say this, anyhow. Recently, the police force has been in contact with a detective that’s almost completely blind as well.”

“Really?” Sachiko tilts her head into. Light watches him nod back to her.

“We enlisted his help on a murder case several months ago.” His eyes avert idly. “By the time he got back to us, we’d already solved it ourselves, but he did take an interest in this current string of thefts.”

“Jeez, what kind of detective takes months to respond to somebody asking for help?” From the last pop of her mouth, Sayu has scoffed, and Light does not blame her. Not especially once he’s leant deep enough to grasp the plate before him, and a third forkful of castella is stuffing his mouth while his father goes on, “He’s certainly...self sufficient. I’d rather not say _arrogant,_ though he seems to run on his own time and rules.”

Light swallows.

_“I didn’t know you were a detective,”_ relays the mouth of his cell phone, eleven:fifty-one the next morning, chilled, docile. Through the walls of the office, he watches L drag his gaze as if surveying the layout, scrutinizing him to the bone. Hands remain flat to the counter, where Light’s own focus babbles, cajoled to look up to catch L as he says, “I didn’t know you cared to know.”

His thumbs pulse in purpose across the screen. _“It’s just a funny coincidence. I had no idea you were working with my father.”_

“A coincidence indeed.” Fingernails, as pristine as they’ve ever been, tap along the counter. A rhythm Light feels vibrate through the wood and up his wrists. “It’s a shame, then, what your father told me about you not being able to fulfill the requirements to work alongside the police task force. From what I’ve seen of you-” And L mumbles here, as he likes to, though Light decides after a moment to process that it’s been said to him, “You’d make a fine detective.”

More than the praise he’s grateful that his prowling flush stays between he and himself there. 

_“I could have,”_ Light moves to correct. _“But mortuary science ended up being a better fit for me. And since we’re on the topic, do you have an appointment, sir?”_

“Cute,” curls back to him, finger lifting to point to him beyond L’s dying smirk. “I suppose that means you aren’t willing to answer me about the photograph business. Hardly a way to treat your most loyal client…”

Enervation wades its short way up the circuits of Light’s chest. _“For the last time, L, people give me pictures of when their loved ones were alive so that Misa and I know how to accurately portray them. That doesn’t mean I’m ‘scrapbooking the dead’.”_ He hopes that text to voice has advanced enough to relay an eyerolling edge to his tone. _“I’m busy now, so I have to ask that you leave unless you’re here for business.”_

To his surprise, L leaves.

And then he comes back.

Fifteen minutes into his next work day, he’s counting through the task slips that have piled up just _slightly_ thicker than he’d admit, laying them back to their folder as he turns for the second half of the front room, balking the shortest touch to the leaf edge that taunts his nose. Misa had been the one who’d advocated to keep the plants left behind by the previous renter of this lot, when it’d been a florist struggling every season outside Valentine’s and White, and she’s the one devoted since to their care. Minus the ivy gasping for water beside his head. He’ll take a broom handle to the ceiling if she isn’t down here soon.

When he sets back to diligence, he hates very nearly to think he’s dawdling from his normal routine of diving head first into his backroom efforts, now that he lives with the lingering sting of something to wait for- but he waves that idea away like a zipping beetle. He isn’t waiting for it so much as he’d rather not be interrupted. That’s all. 

He’s interrupted in the next second to fleet.

_Oh-!_ only his eyes may say in their rise, glancing a silent streak for the man perched just a pace from the front door. Light swings himself back to a professional’s position behind the counter, and he’s readied now, ready to reach out for welcome. Still, he finds he’s dabbling in the unexpected all over again once this new customer he’s never once seen, a tall sleek man of fine black suit and wire frames, lifts his hands to sign, “Good morning. I hope I haven’t interrupted you.”

Light peers at this new gentleman, wary in his own fingers raised to say back, “It’s no trouble at all. How can I help you?”

From the hold beside him, the man hefts a wicker basket onto the counter between them, offers one bow forward, and slips himself back out into the morning sunlight.

He gawks.

_I don’t know what’s been put in here,_ reads the letter in the basket once he’s peeled its cellophane back. _But I trust Watari did an adequate job with my request. Enjoy._

The handwriting lasts minutes beneath his eyes before he’s able to say with certainty he’s read it all correctly, laying it face down to the table in an attempt to be rid of it, though the dark ink wired across the back clamps a fist on his focus. 

_And when you’re ready to send me a thank you card, my address is listed below._

A sharp breath fills him. Leave it to L to make a _nice,_ if not mildly odd, gesture all about himself.

“Ooo, we got a gift basket?” Misa’s already got her face poked into the present before he’s even noticed her presence beside him. “Wow, I _love_ this kind of chocolate! It’s so hard to get around here, though, I only tried it when my girlfriends and I went to France that time. Oh, huh, this ice cream should probably go in the freezer. Might make it taste a little decomposed, though- oh, Light, I’m just kidding! The look on your face is so funny!’

Between revulsion and loitering nonplus his expression rests. L has left and come back, not upon his own weight but rather that of packaged desserts neath the guise of a glittering bow. And within that, Light knows, an invitation, one he clasps his fingers around as Misa moves an armful of ice cream cups toward the fridge they share for packed lunch leftovers occasion to occasion. Invitation. Light tightens his hold around the letter.

Being the self made entrepreneur that he is, Light ends his shift at seven past seven, and the view from his windshield’s a dusky rose he hardly sees as he adjusts so intently his focus on the map in his head.

_Work._

_Coffee._

_Home._

_Parents’ house,_ and in between both homes, a third not of yet his own taste, hitting knuckles to the door of the new placemarker at seven:twenty-four. _L’s house._

Even if he’s already certain he’s got the right place, recognizing the same face from earlier that had gifted him the information to begin with, that sets him into a nodding confidence.

“Evening, Yagami-san,” he greets, he who can only be the _Watari_ he’s heard of once or twice or ten times now in all his meetings with L. An arm invites him further inside. Light dips his head into a polite acceptance. 

On three steps in, he could revert the idea that this at all is where L lives his life, being so that he walks through life like a human (mostly) crayon portrait on a stark white wall, and this place, it’s the stark white walls themselves. Everything’s clean. Neat. Light’s glance behind a shoulder finds he’s alone now, blinking against the dark ahead again to continue, caution and interest. He tilts through the front entry hall, mingling into what could be a living room, or could be a warzone, judging by the mess of papers and wrappers and loose staple teeth littering the coffee table, dripping to the floor. Ah. Much more sense.

Not a sign of life breathes alongside him the whole way through the den, into what’s a clear kitchen with a sink full of dishes and crumbs on the table, and were he a guest in anyone else’s house in the world, he wouldn’t feel enough gall to walk past the first room, nevermind go so far as to traipse a push on a bedroom door.

If L can invade his personal space everyday for, what’s it been now, two weeks? Three? Light’s fair to do the same. And once he has, he’s found it a miracle, drawing the landscape of L sitting on the edge of a wide sheeted mattress, bedding atop in disgusting disarray as the clothing dropped at random along the floor. L sits there, elbows to his knees, spine curled forward, and his lashes pad against either delicate cheekbone all the way to pinching Light beneath his thousand year stare.

“I meant send it by mail,” comes a greeting, a rise to both feet. Light yearns to throttle him in each step nearer. “ _Buuut_ , since you’re here...coffee?”

L maps around the kitchen chairs without bumping a single leg. Toward the counter his fingers feel, grasping a white knuckle clutch upon the carafe handle to bring it to the faucet drip. 

_“You always know it’s me,”_ Light admires, watching the fit of the pot back upon its percolator. Instant coffee measures to fill beneath the top lid.

“Yes,” L says, a delay Light suspects where it’d been spoken first before turning to face him in the repetition now. “I retained a certain level of shadow and light perception, no pun intended.”

Despite how callously he feels himself gone on, Light cannot suppress the ammunition filling his curiosity. _“Retained?”_

The button glows orange in a deft flick _on._

“Amane told me you’ve been as you are since birth, a fact I could already tell from how easily you manage to read lips and sense the presence of others.” A hand reaches toward the wood back of a dining chair, stilling upon it once it’s located. “I on the other hand...went through an accident that resulted in about ninety five percent vision loss as well as various other consequences.”

Never the couth visitor under no observation, Light dips a glance toward the floor where two feet rest, one of bare flesh and its twin a curve of flat black metal. A shake of the head, and he’s back up to full attention in time to see L go on, “It perhaps isn’t the best idea to take on such high intensity detective work at only eight years old, I suppose I paid the price for being so uneducated to the dangers of reality. And warehouse explosions. But I digress.”

Ahead, the chair L grips slides out to allow his body melt into it, cue enough for Light to mirror on the table’s second side. He watches beyond the other how the percolator simmers. Breaths fall in time to it.

_“Thank you for sharing that with me,”_ he types as his phone lay between them. _“Do you live alone here?”_

Fingertip to chin, L nods against it. Light notes the furl of legs up against his chest, wrap of an arm around them, speaks null of it. “My father lives in the apartment above me, should I ever need anything. You met him earlier.” Both hands clasp atop each other now. “I’d much prefer to be catered to, but, _independence,_ and all...” 

_“I understand,”_ Light says, not specifying what he _understands_ is that L is the laziest motherfucker he thinks he’s ever encountered. _“I moved out on my own a few years ago. It wasn’t as much of an adjustment as I expected, honestly. I live a perfectly normal life.”_

Again, quiet tips L’s chin to nod, Light watching him a moment before focus flicks overhead. His point of a finger clasps itself to shake righted, falling forward instead to type, _“Coffee.”_

“Ah,” perks L as his nose lifts, swiveling a blinking glance for it before settling back upon Light. “I take mine with cream and sugar, thank you.”

Light could rip his hair out by the roots if he were strong enough. Though he finds, as time goes on in knowing L, the urge to groan a rumble up the throat does not dance solo, rather aside an ounce of mirth in every lick. Something about the way he’ll amble in in the morning, find an excuse as to why, no, he cannot leave just yet, and most days, Misa will humor him so far as to irk; he’s walked in to the consultation room with once a grieving client, opened the door just to find a meeting already taking place between Misa and L with dripping spoons of vanilla in between. Another afternoon, after he’d already won the argument twice over to send L on his way, he’d returned from his break and surfed to the back just to be stopped at the sight of inanity beyond her workstation door. Mask across her mouth, he’d been able to make out nothing of Misa’s half to the conversation, though judging by the toetagged model propped up before L’s scrutiny, it couldn’t have been of his taste.

_“How’s the suicide plan coming along?”_ asks Light one midmorning, three days after L had delivered a potted fern for Misa to store among the rest of her weeping heirs, one fingers stroke across now after Light had said, make yourself useful, water the plants, and L had replied back, make yourself useful, embalm my corpse.

“Don’t rush me,” he replies now, expression nonchalant as any. The moonlight of the nonexistent night paints his face an exquisite, angled pale. “I’ll get to it eventually. Where do you keep your watering pitcher?”

The first time Light has a dirty thought, perhaps in his entire life, he confides in his sister, because she’s a university student, so naturally, she’s an expert on sex.

Crowds don’t tend to bother him. He’d delivered the To-Oh entrance ceremony speech to a class of hundreds, all alone with only the interpreter and his own natural eloquence beside him, and from age ten he’d been the center of attention at all his father’s business functions where grownups got together and drank alcohol but nobody ever called it a party, since policemen don’t party. Sayu, being a university student yadda yadda yadda, she parties, and she weaves her way through the mobbed lanes of the shopping mall they peruse, a Sunday where he’d texted her about the outing and she’d all but thrown herself at him once his car had filled the driveway. “It’s been so long since we just hung out together,” she’d said only half coherently, as one hand had been busy tugging the seatbelt into place. But he’d understood, smiling toward the rear window as he pulled out onto the sunned street.

“Is it still that same guy you were talking about, the one that wouldn’t leave you alone?” Her chunky white sneakers pad past windows of specialty stores down the row. He looks to her, nods, pulling the conversation back to himself, “He still won’t leave me alone, but maybe it isn’t so bad. I think he’s lonely, honestly.”

“And that’s where the romance comes in-”

“Of course not,” signs vehemently before his tightened frown. Sayu snorts behind her palm. 

“Okay, okay,” she waves. They pass a deep scarlet smelling aroma store. “So, you made a friend. That’s great! Even if he’s a little annoying sometimes, I think you still should give him a chance. You know, there was this girl in one of my classes, and she asked me why I talk with my mouth so wide. Like, how do I even answer that? _Sorry, my brother’s been deaf since before I was born?”_ Brunette shakes itself in its tie behind her head. Where a disgruntled huff pricks her, the toss brings forth a shimmer to replace it. “Anyway, she asked me to go to a Babymetal concert with her, so, you know, sometimes people are annoying, but then you like them. Is that where I was going with this? Oh, hey look, there’s a soft pretzel place over there.”

He wonders how her knuckles don’t cramp from the mile a minute she palavers. Still, there’s a glint in her eye caught from the overhead lighting, seated to a round metallic table just the two of them when he tips a hush between. “...I think I want to kiss him.”

“Ewww!” Tongue tip from the grinning lips, it laps a smear of cinnamon butter from the corner before retreating back home. Where he warms, she bats a hand to his arm for attention again. “I’m only teasing. And it’s totally obvious, anyway, just from the way you talked about him. I say go for it, you only live once, remember?”

Light stares forward, the reflection of his face in the tabletop, the sharp shape of him and all that he is, and thinks of every second of the life he’s watched drain through his fingers like cape beach sand.

Remember, yes.

He could never forget.


	4. Chapter 4

By the time he knows L for two months, they’ve met at his office what must be fifty or so times, the odd days where L hadn’t shown up bleeding a double rhythm of fret into Light’s chest. But he always returns, and by the end of April, the ivy wraps tall around the shelves, and he’s sat on L’s living room sofa eleven times. On this the eleventh time, Light keeps both feet to the ground, drinking up the feeling of the speaker on the coffee table as it croons to the both of them.

“It’s an old album,” L explains. “But,” and so near they sit that he can feel the heat of his sigh, “what else was I to do growing up in the UK in the late eighties. It’d just be irresponsible of me not to love George Michael.”

Light had been the first to inquire after L’s music taste, and _that_ had come only _after_ L had mentioned liking music, liking sound of any kind that can incite a reminder that his heart’s still beating on the most dull of days. Light had said he likes music, too, and L had perhaps sang along with the CD melody then, but Light couldn’t stop smirking long enough to ask.

“Your father told me you play piano,” lulls him down from amusement to fill heavy in ambivalence.

 _“I do. I took lessons when I was younger.”_ His thumb plays impatient taps aside his screen before he finishes, _“It’s been a few years since I’ve had the time to practice, though.”_

Curled up lap to chest, L nods to the rhythm of the stereo, to the artificial voice crackling past it. “I’d like for you to play for me sometime. Perhaps if we lived together, you’d have more time to indulge in your passions.”

 _“...Huh?”_ is all Light can bring himself to type to it, quirking his lovely face into disbelief. 

L shifts his pose, cheek brushing against the bones of bent knees. A fingertip coasts his bottom lip. He instinctively lowers it before he says, “I can think of multiple reasons we’d both be benefited by that sort of arrangement. It gets boring on my own, what with being able to solve your father’s cases in a matter of hours.” Fresh spring, it would feel, draws into L’s inhale. “Additionally, you’re the only roommate I can foresee who wouldn’t complain about the volume I like to keep the television at.”

His hands are mouths that wetten themselves at the anticipation of response. Light scuffs a breath into his nose, processing like a grating fax all that L has just chosen to spill. Something above curves his focus, across, back, wondering just who the hell either of them think they are as he tilts his eyes back down to the screen of his phone to find it darkened. A press on the home button begs him back the symbol of an emptied battery.

Light scowls.

With a set of the device to the table, he leans back into his spot, shifting to face enough toward the middle to grasp L’s hand in his own. _PHONE DIED_ writes into his palm.

“Is that so...” Leftward tilts his jaw. “Well...feel free to find an outlet. But I think we’ll be fine without.”

Light could ask him onward, but he doesn’t have time, not before the lengths of cold fingers are lifting to say, “I’ve practiced.”

If his heart could pound any harder, he thinks he’d pluck a diamond from his chest. 

“That’s really nice of you,” spells his own hand directly against the other’s, slower than he’s usual to speak, higher in force. He watches L’s expression sip the sensation of words against his skin, connecting shapes to their meanings. “I think it might be kind of nice to live together, actually. Like I said, it isn’t difficult to live alone, but it is a little boring. We could help each other, I think we’d make an alright team.”

A silent fist relaxes itself in the plate of L’s palm. They remain, settled there for the eleventh time on his three seater sofa where the third never exists, and the table’s a ruin that Light would uproot from the source were he a resident. Everything would be better. There’d be floor. He bites a humored smile at the idea, despite how reckless the whole thing has been thrown up against the thickened air, he cannot mind. His fingers do not twitch as they lay there, patient, allowing the quiet to pass betwixt them and the breeze of the open window to comb the thinnest lengths of his hair. 

“...I’ll be honest,” he thinks he must read thrice over just to be sure it’s come from _L,_ the very same L he’s never known a truth from in the most idle settings. But, he says it, right there from his mouth, hand slipping forward to, rather than speak, find itself folded within the heat of Light’s own. “I don’t know a word you just said.”

A point blank stare ends in a forward tipped laugh. Light straightens, looks to him across the five inch gap their noses span, feels the music up his legs and the wind on his cheek. His lips tingle against each other. Nine years.

“...I said,” trembles itself from his throat, bringing only a freed hand up to feel it, the vibrations of his very own self, up another notch to define each syllable as he finds it. “I said, you...you have really soft hands, L.”

For something so subtle, so simple, as Light’s voice reaches the waiting chambers of L’s hearing, the most lush pull of joy draws a mile across his lips.

Between them, neither know for certain who has offered the squeeze of pressure upon their clasped hands.

Life.


End file.
